Your Ancestry

[Shawn]

I have a retired mother with nothing better to do with her time than exhaustively research her and my dad's genealogies, and thanks to the Irish Catholic Church's meticulous and publicly-available Baptismal records, she's been very successful.

I'm 75% Irish and 25% Ukrainian. Catholic on all sides. The Irish has surprisingly little pre-1820s English admixture, and no Scottish.

The Ukrainian side is in all likelihood actually Romanian ethnicity; my great-grandfather was from Chernivtsi, on the Romanian border. He was drafted into and fought for Tsarist Russia in WWI, deserted with the rest of the army when the Eastern Front fully collapsed in 1917 as the Revolution began, walked from Ukraine to Amsterdam, and sailed to Boston. The fact that he was Roman Catholic and not Ukrainian Greek Catholic points to being ethnically Romanian and not Ukrainian.

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I have a retired mother with nothing better to do with her time than exhaustively research her and my dad's genealogies, and thanks to the Irish Catholic Church's meticulous and publicly-available Baptismal records, she's been very successful.

I'm 75% Irish and 25% Ukrainian. Catholic on all sides. The Irish has surprisingly little pre-1820s English admixture, and no Scottish.

The Ukrainian side is in all likelihood actually Romanian ethnicity; my great-grandfather was from Chernivtsi, on the Romanian border. He was drafted into and fought for Tsarist Russia in WWI, deserted with the rest of the army when the Eastern Front fully collapsed in 1917 as the Revolution began, walked from Ukraine to Amsterdam, and sailed to Boston. The fact that he was Roman Catholic and not Ukrainian Greek Catholic points to being ethnically Romanian and not Ukrainian.

Sheesh by foot?! How long would a journey like that take? And how did he pay for food and lodging and stuff like that?

People back then were seriously built different.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I have a retired mother with nothing better to do with her time than exhaustively research her and my dad's genealogies, and thanks to the Irish Catholic Church's meticulous and publicly-available Baptismal records, she's been very successful.

Up to when? The Irish church records must not go back very far given all the destruction there's been in Ireland with the English.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by 38 Geary

Sheesh by foot?! How long would a journey like that take? And how did he pay for food and lodging and stuff like that?

People back then were seriously built different.

It's perhaps a family legend. It would have required crossing the German lines (hard to imagine), then crossing an enemy territory for 1,500 km without being detected.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

You are 20 or 30 years late in your knowledge of these things. Time to update your references, unless you're one of those Evangelicals who wish to have a literal reading of the Bible with an Adam and an Eve.

When homo sapiens arrived in Europe, they interbred with the humans that were already there, known as Neanderthals. The Tautavel man, in my video, as well as those from Northern Spain which are also presented in the documentary, at the direct ancestors of the Neanderthals, i.e. also our ancestors.

It has nothing to do with Evangelicals. All humans alive have a single common ancestor that lived in East Africa around 200,000 years ago. It's not relevant whether humans mixed earlier or later.

My genetic exam result showed me that on my matrilineal and patrilineal lines. Same for Steely.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I did one of those ancestral DNA tests, but I told them to wind the clock back about 200,000 years.

It turns out I'm 100% pure African!!!

Hey, me too! Merry New Year!!!

• Video Link

But mostly German. . .

. . .

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Actually there were already early humans living in Southern France and Northern Spain 200,000 years ago.

The video has English subtitles. This extraordinary documentary was broadcast here a few months ago, with the latest discoveries and state of knowledge. It's only the beginning of it in the video.

Modern humans have only been around 300,000 years. They didn't move into Europe until about 50,000 years ago.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Yuri

It has nothing to do with Evangelicals. All humans alive have a single common ancestor that lived in East Africa around 200,000 years ago. It's not relevant whether humans mixed earlier or later.

Simply not true at all. Nearly all Europeans also have an ancestor that lived in Europe 200,000 years ago.

[PhilliesPhan]

I'll take a test one of these days and find out. I don't know a ton about my family's history prior to 1932. Like other Black Americans, not much is known about where my ancestors are originally from. I've heard that my late grandfather's parents were descendants of slaves from the South, and I know for sure that someone from my late grandfather's side of the family had a child with a master. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm at least 70% some combination of African and at least 20% some combination of European.

What's really going to be interesting is to see what my son's genetic makeup looks like. My wife is White (mostly Irish) and Asian (Indonesian), and we had a child together. He doesn't bare a strong resemblance to either one of us, yet you can see a mix of both of our features in him (ex. He has nose and lips you'd expect to see on a black person, but mostly straight hair and very fair skin).

Returning to the lack of knowledge about my ancestors for a second, I'm reminded of an eye-opening experience the first time I studied abroad. I traveled to Paris in 2015 and spent time at the university partnered with alma mater. I met several Afro-French students while there. One of them asked me where I was from and I responded with "America." They then clarified and asked which African country I was originally from. I had to explain that not only was I born and raised in the US, but that most Black Americans whose families have lived in the US for several generations know very little about their ancestors. It was a learning experience for us all!

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Modern humans have only been around 300,000 years. They didn't move into Europe until about 50,000 years ago.

Modern humans descend from earlier humans. We also descend from the humans who lived in Europe 500,000 years ago.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Yuri

All humans alive have a single common ancestor that lived in East Africa around 200,000 years ago.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Modern humans descend from earlier humans. We also descend from the humans who lived in Europe 500,000 years ago.

There is believed to be some (very, very light) mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans that have no human lineage outside of Africa, but that didn't occur until modern humans spread outside of Africa less than 50,000 years ago. Modern humans lived in Africa for upwards of 80% of the time that the species has existed. Neaderthals never lived in Africa and were not humans (but they were part of the homo genus).

[MolsonExport]

100% not of the Loire Valley or St. Pierre et Miquelon.

[MolsonExport]

Most modern non-African humans retain about 1% to 2% Neanderthal DNA. Europeans are thus genetically 98-99% not comprised of the archaic (pre homo sapiens) hominids.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Neaderthals never lived in Africa and were not humans (but they were part of the homo genus).

In scientific terms, a human is any member of the genus Homo. So the Neanderthals were humans, as were also Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis (those who lived in Southern France and Northern Spain 200,000 years ago). They were early forms of humans.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

In scientific terms, a human is any member of the genus Homo. So the Neanderthals were humans, as were also Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis (those who lived in Southern France and Northern Spain 200,000 years ago). They were early forms of humans.

They were part of the homo genus, but they were not "modern humans" (Homo sapiens). They were a distinct branch of the homo genus that evolved outside of Africa. Homo sapiens were a branch of the homo genus that evolved within Africa. The branches only had brief contact with each other between when homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, and Neanderthals went extinct.

[New Brisavoine]

This map shows the migrations of the first humans out of Africa. It took place LONG BEFORE homo sapiens moved out of Africa. That's why it is wrong to say "I descend from a single couple that lived in Africa 200,000 years ago". All Europeans descend also from these early humans, and the bottleneck theory of homo sapiens is not only debated (it's not a scientific consensus), but even if it existed, the bottleneck would have meant perhaps 10,000 people at the lowest, not just 1 couple, which is a Biblical vision of history.

Ma = million years
The dotted red line shows the maximum extent reached by these early humans.



This map shows the earliest presence of early humans outside of Africa:

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

They were part of the homo genus, but they were not "modern humans" (Homo sapiens). They were a distinct branch of the homo genus that evolved outside of Africa. Homo sapiens were a branch of the homo genus that evolved within Africa. The branches only had brief contact with each other between when homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, and Neanderthals went extinct.

This is correct. I am pretty sure that NB is not an anthropologist, but rather, just another armchair philosopher.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

This map shows the migrations of the first humans out of Africa. It took place LONG BEFORE homo sapiens moved out of Africa. That's why it is wrong to say "I descend from a single couple that lived in Africa 200,000 years ago". All Europeans descend also from these early humans, and the bottleneck theory of homo sapiens is not only debated (it's not a scientific consensus), but even if it existed, the bottleneck would have meant perhaps 10,000 people at the lowest, not just 1 couple, which is a Biblical vision of history.

That's not wrong to say. If you're able to read these words and interpret them then you did descend from a specific being in Africa around 200,000 years ago. Those beings that descended from that person came into contact with other branches of the homo genus, and yes, there is some shared DNA. But Neanderthals are generally not considered to be the same species as modern human beings. However, that is under debate with proof that there was at least some ability for the two groups to create fertile offspring. But we do know that Neanderthals did NOT contribute a ton to the genetic makeup of modern humans.

[UrbanImpact]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Have you tested before? What were the results? Any surprises? How it relates to the history of the place you live in?

Like you, I'm Brazilian (My parents are from Minas Gerais), but, I was born in New York City and moved to Florida at 6years old (I'm 43 now). I do have dual citizenship

My Results:
36% Azores
32% Portugal
13% Northern Spain
6% Spain
5% East Midlands
3% Eastern South America
2% Quebec (this one is strange to me)